musical musings from the frozen north:
torontopia, mont royal city and kawartha kottages

Monday, November 10, 2014

Sean Michaels - Us Conductors

Most music writers aim for poetry in their prose; most, if not
all, fail. Sean Michaels, on the other hand, is perhaps the only music writer
from whom I would expect an exquisitely poetic novel. He and his comrades at
the now-ancient MP3 blog Said the
Gramophone use original short fiction, fanciful prose, poetry and sometimes
just illustrations to accompany the music they’re excited to share with us. Not
surprising, then, that Michaels has written a novel about music. But it’s not a
thinly veiled autobiography about getting your heart broken by some girl who
didn’t like your mixtape. Far, far from it.

Instead, Us Conductors takes as a template the very real, very
strange life of Leon Theremin, inventor of the world’s first electronic
instrument, and uses it to explore how a work of creation—a song, a novel, an
invention—can be subject to the whims of history and circumstance, searching
for an audience. Most important, it examines how all acts of creation are, in
essence, unrequited love, and how the lies we tell ourselves can be what saves
us in the end. If that weren’t enough, Michaels’s tale takes place amidst the
shifting sands of the early 20th century—political, technological,
philosophical—that comprise a period of momentous, turbulent change.

I first tried to read the book when it came out in April. I failed. I had seen the excellent 1994 documentary Theremin; I felt I already knew the strange-but-true story of Leon Theremin. I have a problem with historical fiction based on real people; I had a similar struggle with Ann-Marie MacDonald's The Way the Crow Flies, about the Steven Truscott case (is this part true? is this part made up?). I recognized that Michaels was a great writer successfully transitioning into novels, but I didn't feel I could dive into this particular book. But whatever—my loss. Because when I decided to get over my hangups and came back to it this fall, I was completely enchanted. Yes, the story is fascinating, but the real appeal of the book is Michaels's poetic economy, his beautiful language and his effortless evocation of larger philosophical questions into his narrative. It's a thoroughly satisfying novel, and I'm happy that the Giller nod means that it will find an audience outside of music fans (because it's about so much more than that) and first-fiction followers (because it's much more accomplished than that).

I wrote an extremely brief piece
for Maclean’s about it, as part of their lead-up to the Giller prize gala
(tonight, broadcast on CBC-TV at 9 p.m. EST); Michaels also wrote my favourite
of the essays where we asked each nominee to talk about their writing life.

You set yourself a
modest goal: choosing, as the protagonist of your first novel, a man whose
story spans the history of the first half of the 20th century:
revolution, freedom, slavery, innovation, the Cold War, racial relations,
Soviet gulags, jazz, television, the dawn of electronic music.

It was a
strange book to write, because the source material was almost too crammed with
meat. It became a pressure: it was strange to leave stuff out because there was
already too much meat. But it’s true. There was a bit of discomfort. I remember
reading Ragtime, by E.L. Doctorow,
several years before writing this, and that was the counterpoint: I loved that
book, which took this period of time and showed the disparate forces
intersecting. Because they were: the
’20s and ’30s were one of those exciting times when the arts and political and
economic forces were really all at the same parties, in places in Europe and
North America and Asia. So why not visit that spot?

Did you go on tangents you later stripped away?

Yes.
There were even more montage party scenes. And in the historical reality of
Theremin’s life, there was an American ambassador to Russia, Averell Harriman,
on whom, late in the book, Theremin is eavesdropping in the American embassy in
Moscow. In real life, Harriman was on Theremin’s boat during his first trip to
America 20 years before. I learned that detail, and thought: arrrrgh. I could
have a scene early in the book with a line like, “Perhaps we’ll meet again, Mr.
Harriman.” But it would be too much. I wanted to write a short book that said
less rather than more, as often as possible. That becomes a hard obstacle when
there are so many faces, so many rooms.

It’s often said, of
incredulous events, that “if they wrote it as fiction no one would believe it.”
And yet you chose to recast the strange, tumultuous life of Leon Theremin as
fiction. Why?

Before I started to write the book, I was thinking about the
experience of a lying, true love. It’s the weird sense of when people have
relationships [with] a soulmate: they feel this connection and so on. Some of
us have experienced this and then seen it not work out. I was thinking of how
it intersects with ideas of destiny and identity and love and beauty. Reading
about Theremin and seeing the documentary about him, I was struck by the fact
that all these true stories of his life gestured toward this unconsummated true
love with Clara Rockmore. I fundamentally did not believe that story, that it was
unconsummated true love. They were both married to other people. But could I
explore that idea of a lying, true love in a number of ways through the lens of
this story? Not just the universe telling you you’re meant to be with this
person, but what happens if you’re in a place of great darkness, and the only
thing getting you through is a kind of lie?

That happens to a lot of us: we have these delusions, these
fictions, that tug us through life. Theremin’s story became an interesting way
to present this. However, I don’t know what Lev felt for Clara or vice-versa. I
knew what I wanted to explore was an idea of this kind of relationship, that I
could never know the interior of these people’s lives. I wanted to throw out
the window the idea that I was trying to tell the truth of their relationship.
Rather, I was trying to use the skeleton of their relationship to explore a
larger set of notions.

Even in a much shallower way—it’s funny to describe it as
shallow—but the way we ascribe meaning to life. It’s stories we’re telling
ourselves. They may be made up or they may be true, but the best fictions often
feel true.

Jesus loves me.

Yeah! Or, “I’m here for a reason.” Or, “My kids mean something.”
Okay, that’s pretty dark. Some people who have read Us Conductors see it as this weird portrait of a beautiful
relationship that was meant to be. Yet toward the end of the book, he finally
tells the reader a conversation he had with Clara before he left America, that
makes it even clearer that their relationship was not ongoing.

I love the word
“conductor”: of electricity, of creativity, of an orchestra of people
interpreting the work of others. Why did you use it in the title?

The
working title was “In which I seek the heart of Clara Rockmore, my one true love,
finest theremin player the world will ever know.” That was the voice that was carrying through much of the writing.
Then when I decided to go with something shorter, I wanted to have a title that
nodded to the way the book is addressed to someone. “You” and “we” are used
throughout the book, and I wanted the title to nod to that tone, that era, kind
of formal and regal. There’s something interesting to me that, in English, the
word “conduct” means both to lead—and in this case, the conductor has his hands
in the air evocative of the hands of a thereminist—and to be led, to have
something flow through you. They seem to be opposites, but the same word
carries it, and I found that interesting.

Also: is a thereminist
someone who is making music, or channelling it? And we, as feeling human
beings, are we making—well, not making—are we summoning love, are we creating
or initiating love or is it something passing through us, out in the universe.

You’re nominated for a
major Canadian literary prize. What, if anything, is Canadian about your book?

I
was very surprised and very pleased, flattered, proud [to be nominated for the
Giller]. Writing this book I was conscious of how little of Canada was in the
book. I love Montreal very much. Part of me wonders why would I ever write a
book that doesn’t take place in Montreal; it’s full of things that I love and
that I find mysterious and beautiful and hilarious. The book has really very
few winks to Canada. Canadian literature has a reputation for being centred
around events in Canadian cities, but it’s always had this real international
breadth: Michael Ondaatje, Robertson Davies, Rohinton Mistry. There’s always
been a large variety of works coming out of this country. I’m glad to be a tick
in the register that communicates the wide diversity of art that’s come out of
this country.

How hard has it been
to find thereminists in every city on your book tour?

That’s
been a crazy adventure in itself. Some cities were unexpectedly difficult.
Toronto has far fewer thereminists than I’d guessed. I had to bring one in from
Guelph [Jeff Bird]. In Portland, Oregon, I thought there would be one on every
street corner, but they were very hard to find. Even Asheville, N.C., which is
where [Robert] Moog built theremins, we had to bring one up from Atlanta. The
Moog corporation said, “No, we don’t know any talented, gifted theremin
players.” Then New York, as you would expect, has this nice community of great
players.

There are a few different types of people who are attracted to
the theremin. One of the types are these incredible interpreters who just
stumbled across this instrument, for whom this is the way they can best
communicate their secret hearts. They are the kind of musician I love the most,
with a certain virtuosity that is surpassed by the spirit with which they play.

Some of them are real engineers. They really understand the
electrical element of it: how the amplitude and voltage interact. There’s a
much more engineers’ approach to the instrument that I don’t see with other
musicians. A lot of really gifted ones are like carpenters or violinists, where
their instrument is just a tool to communicate sound. There’s something
refreshing about musicians who play with such elaborate contraptions that can
still just see it as, “Oh, this is just a thing that I manipulate in order to
make music.”